Course

The Internet has changed our lives. This unit will help you to understand how the development of the internet led to an explosion of innovation and creativity, the creation of a ‘commons’ envornment and how reactions to these developments could affect opportunities to use and share ideas in the future.

Please note:
Much of this unit is based on the Open University course T182 The law, the internet and society, which is no longer offered for credit, and on The Future of Ideas by Lawrence Lessig, linked below. Though we have made a small number of minor amendments, the material was last substantively updated in the early part of 2005, so bear in mind that some of the cases, laws and technologies discussed will have moved on since then.

All the course materials are in one file and the progress bar in course content will not indicate percentage progress through the materials until you have finished going through them all.  To pick up where you left off, please use the left menu navigation for the different sections of the course as these will indicate whether you have visited a page or not.